


Day 25: Mind Control

by Aichi



Series: Kinktober 2020 [25]
Category: Cardfight!! Vanguard
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Mind Control
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:48:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27697165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aichi/pseuds/Aichi
Summary: Domestic uses for the power of the Evil Eye include: "helping" your partner calm down after a nightmare.
Relationships: Luard/Stealth Dragon Shiranui
Series: Kinktober 2020 [25]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1951588
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	Day 25: Mind Control

**Author's Note:**

> NOTE: THIS IS TECHNICALLY A SEQUEL TO DAY 24, buuuut you CAN read it independently I think so I haven't marked it as such.
> 
> Shihai.

By the time Luard finally stops crying, his head is throbbing hard enough to crack his skull in half.

The remnants of the dream still cling to his skin like hungry leeches, black and twisted and bloated. Luard drags his nails down his arms, scratching at the invisible darkness, but it’s buried so, so deep, its bitter roots burrowed far enough to squeeze around his shriveled heart. He still feels the tendrils, slithering wetly over his limbs and crushing the resistance from his chest as they bind him to Gyze’s will. He still feels the emptiness inside, the true nature of a rotten shell of blackness built to house emptiness itself. How can he be sure the flesh under his hands, _on_ his hands is even real?

He can’t cry anymore. Mouth and nose thick with mucus and dead air, he can only shudder silently against Shiranui’s chest, burning skull pressed desperately against the coolness of his partner’s scales.

“Luard,” Shiranui says softly, for what feels like the hundredth time. “It’s not real. You’re safe.” He’s so patient, so infinitely patient. “I’m here. Stay with me, please.”

A thick, painful groan bubbles up from Luard’s chest. His skin is slimy and clammy, his brain buckling under the weight of two realities.

“Luard,” Shiranui tries again, a firm edge to his voice. “Do you need me to help you?”

Claws rest meaningfully on Luard’s shoulder. The words pinch something inside his skull, a memory, something personal and important. It’s a thin, tangled thread, buried under knotted mountains of emptiness and pain and raw nerves he can’t even bring himself to touch, but he takes hold of it, and lets himself be pulled along against the current of his hollow thoughts.

“Yes,” he says, and the word echoes in the empty cavity of his chest.

“Okay.” The claws move to his face, curling under his chin and lifting his gaze to meet Shiranui’s. “Look at me, Luard.”

He does. Shiranui’s eyes are bright, yet tense, the scales around them creased with worry — but they aren’t the thing that draws Luard’s gaze, dragging him in with all the power and inevitability of a black hole.

Set between Shiranui’s jagged, ivory horns, the blank and lidless Evil Eye begins to glow.

Its first glimmers are a warm, sunset orange that floods the room and stretches the shadows of Shiranui’s wings. The light falls over Luard like a heavy blanket, and his breath stills beneath the Eye’s unblinking, unyielding gaze. Already, there’s no escaping it. It doesn’t even occur to him to look away as the glow broadens and deepens into a brilliant red, sweeping him up into its flow as it pulsates, dims — he finally sucks in a breath — then brightens again — and he lets it out — slow and even, again and again, his heart and lungs gradually slipping into its steady rhythm.

“There,” Shiranui says, from somewhere very far away, but also from inside the back of his own skull, “there you are. I’ve got you.”

It’s true. Luard couldn’t move if he wanted to. It’s like being bound to Gyze all over again, and yet at the same time entirely different. His body is something no longer his own; he’s _shifted_ , become detached without even realizing it, so that he’s floating just outside its bounds — but instead of feeling bitter, clawing emptiness carving out his insides, it’s as if the pool of his mind has been drained almost dry, the trickling remnants of his consciousness scooped into a bowl held in Shiranui’s claws. His vision is tinted with shades of red, the faint glow of his eyes reflected in the shiniest of the dragon’s scales, turning them a deeper indigo than ever.

“Stand,” Shiranui says, “please.”

Luard does, the surface of his thoughtless mind rippling with the vibrations of Shiranui’s words.

“Now, come. I’ll make us some tea.”

Every step as Luard follows the dragon to their kitchen is dizzying, and yet distant. His awareness of his body is little more than a blur of red static, his joints loose and fluid like they’ve been over-oiled, and he wanders after Shiranui and his Eye with the single-minded determination of a ship gliding onto jagged rocks before a lighthouse. Why, after all, would he ever do anything else?

“Have a seat,” Shiranui commands, as he busies himself selecting herbs.

Luard sits obediently at the table. Red moonlight floods in the window, but the details of the modest room are lost in the blurred edges of his vision; his eyes follow only Shiranui’s movements, head lolling like a puppet as he waits for further orders. There is nothing else to do. The ripples have stilled, and his mind is warm, calm, relaxed.

Safe. Safe, and blissfully blank.

He’d been worried about something before, hadn’t he? 

No, it doesn’t seem possible, and so he doesn’t dwell on it, _can’t_ dwell on it. The little carved wooden bowl that Shiranui carries his mind in is too small; there’s nowhere for him to lay his thoughts out and _think_ them, so he simply doesn’t. He sits at the table, gaze trailing after the Evil Eye as it and its master work around him, and it leaves a dark, flickering tail burned into his vision as it moves.

Luard waits. He doesn’t know how long, and he doesn’t know that he doesn’t know.

Eventually, Shiranui sits something on the table before him. “Here.”

It’s a tall, ceramic tea cup, hot and steaming, and the only reason it exists is because Shiranui is the one who put it there. Luard’s eyes flicker over it for a moment, obediently perceiving it, and then his attention slides neatly back to Shiranui’s face, to his horns, to the softly pulsating glow of the Eye. Once again, there is nothing else in the entire world.

“Drink,” Shiranui insists, sitting down opposite him.

The cup shimmers back into reality, and Luard’s hands close around it, slow and limp-wristed. His whole body is _loose_ , distant, a forgotten kite trailing after his consciousness, only moving because Shiranui is there to steer it. He doesn’t taste the tea as it trickles down a throat that isn’t really his, not right now, but he _does_ feel its warmth; it’s like a little candle has been lit deep inside him, a flicker of light shining under his fragile skin.

Shiranui drinks too, and Luard follows, rejoining the rhythm of the Eye. He lifts his cup, tips his head to swallow, sets the ceramic gently back against the table with a _clink_ as he savors a fresh mouthful of warmth, every movement echoing the dragon’s. Dimly, his ears register wind whipping through the trees outside, the cry of a faraway owl — but that’s all it is, something far away, so far it might as well be another world. Shiranui, though, is _here_ , and Shiranui is _real_ , and the Evil Eye pulses as if it itself were Luard’s heart, and he knows, instinctively, with all the senses left to him in his tiny earthen vessel, that there’s nothing else more important in this world or any other than that light.

“Are you feeling better?” Shiranui asks.

A single thought bubbles to the surface. It’s disruptive, slipping by the barriers of the delicately crafted stillness the Eye enshrines him in and threatening to drag with it — _something_ , something big and dark and evil, and he flinches violently away from it — but even as it happens he knows that it’s intentional, that Shiranui allowed this, just for a moment, because it’s the one single moment where it matters that he truly thinks for himself.

“Yes,” he says. His voice is alien in his — his? Shiranui’s? — throat.

“Do you want me to let you go?”

“N-no.”

“Very well.” The dragon’s lips curl into a smile, and the familiar warm, hazy blanket falls back over Luard’s mind and body. The discomfort of speaking melts away almost instantly with the next sip of his tea, hands lifting the mug to his lips without want or will, only obedience.

When the tea is finished, and the mug just as empty as he is, Shiranui orders him back to bed, and he spends the rest of the night wrapped in the security of his partner’s mind and arms and tail — thoughtless, and dreamless, and safe.

**Author's Note:**

> Idk I've realized Immediately I have no idea how to write this kind of altered state lol I'll try again another time maybe. More excuses for more Shiralua.
> 
> Twitter: @cosmowreath


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